Dreams that Cling: A Ladybug One-Shot
by EldritchGeneral
Summary: Ruby Rose was left with scars after defeating Salem, and Blake can't figure out a way to help her love. (warning; excessive use of the word 'weep')


Ruby Rose took many things from fairy tales. Lessons, solace, inspiration. And after a time she would take her dreams from these tales. Knights, Huntresses. What they might have dreamed, what they fought for. She too came to fight for things, people, not who or what she expected, and certainly not how. And she was never told what dreams would cling.

Her dreams had been the same for four years. Not every night, and those few visionless nights became as sparse and as precious as her own mother's voice. When she awoke from these dreams she would be drenched in sweat. After a time she ceased washing the sheets with any regularity.

They started after the witch Salem's defeat. She felt nothing but relief when her silver eyes flared for one final time. She and her team were far and away from the people when they'd first met. Things started, as they often do, with a thought, and she found herself falling for Blake Belladonna, or maybe she fell for the Silver-eyed Warrior first, neither kept track. Despite their love of books, neither of them were terribly meticulous.

The dreams did not lessen as their love grew. Tired, eyes like cherries in broken glass, she would think of the warriors she read about and in fuming jealousy cry for silence. But she would never talk.

Blake Belladonna's family was royalty, as close as there was in the world of faunus. She did not have much family and what she did she did not know much of. Perhaps it was a difference in personality. However, they were all warriors, even her mother, and dreams did not cling to them. They were no help when she came to them for advice on her lover's troubles. She then went to friends, but they had their own demons, or dealt with them in their own ways, closed off and separate. She went to Ruby's family. But Yang simply replied in that elder sibling way that Ruby would grow past it.

She didn't know why she avoided Qrow Branwen, but after Ruby and Blake became the Belladonnas, Blake visited him at a bar he frequented. She asked, plainly, if Ruby's mother had suffered similar nightmares. Dusty old Qrow stopped mid-drink and put his glass down.

"Sharper eye than me, kid," he said, and looked at her out of the corner of his eye, "I didn't realize what was going on with Summer until she and Tai got married."

"Did he ever figure it out?" Blake asked, about the situation or the solution, Qrow wasn't sure.

Qrow stared into his drink, and there was held the regrets of many years, "Yeah," and he knocked back his drink, when he finished Blake almost expected a wise saying, "That all you can do is be there for people," he might have been crying, "And we weren't, for a long time."

Blake might well have joined him in crying.

One starless, cloudy night, her wife's body turning, clinging to covers so tightly they warped and tore, muttering sparse phrases she only knew the barest contexts, Blake grabbed hold of her love.

"Don't go," Ruby said, quiet as a whisper. Perhaps half a run in her legs. She kicked Blake in the thigh.

Blake didn't say anything.

"Don't go!" Ruby spoke again, louder. It felt as though she was tearing herself from Blake's grasp. She loosened her hold a bit, but soon they settled back in.

For the rest of the night they laid together. Ruby would still chase phantoms, stirring Blake in the dark, but they lay together as Blake wondered what troubled her lover.

_She sees the wires tighten._

_ She sees the arrow fly._

_ She sees Ren shoving Nora out of the way._

_ She sees the fading form of Weiss and her Gigas as they __assaulted__ Salem's palace._

_ Everytime she tries again to save them. Somehow. She could have fought harder. Been faster. Pushed herself more. She had magic. She had speed. She was her mother's daughter._

_She pleads for them to stay. Somehow, someway._

Ruby Belladonna began to thrash about, a booming in her chest, a hitch in her breath. She tried to break free of whatever held her. Claws at her back. What new beast was Salem throwing at her? Her semblance wasn't working. She cried aloud between sleep and wakefulness.

"Ruby, Ruby! Honey, it's me!" Blake said, unsure whether to hold on or to let go.

Ruby all at once left her dreams, met the darkness of the bedroom. Panic and thumping in her chest and cold sweat all over, she turned to meet darkness, but she and her wife's eyes did find each other. After a moment they repositioned and held the other. Ruby stifled a cry. Blake stroked her hair, "It's okay."

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Nothing to be sorry for."

"I-"

"Shh," Blake said, putting her chin to Ruby's forehead, "Just rest."

Ruby just waited, she could never get back to sleep after a nightmare, and Blake knew it. Ruby didn't know what Blake was trying. She thought to say something and then she just decided to try and rest and then an odd and not quite-familiar sound started filling her ear.

It was soft as fur and came in slow rolling waves, deep from Blake's chest, she was purring. She'd fallen asleep before Ruby. It occurred to her she'd never fallen asleep in her lover's arms, and the thought cut her deeply. She grabbed hold of her tightly and started to weep. Sadness, bitterness, happiness, a cocktail of emotions. Blake woke up, shifted so she could breathe.

Blake put her hand behind Ruby's head and rested her chin.

"I didn't know you could purr," Ruby said, between tiny sobs. 


End file.
